When You Rock 'n' Roll With Me
by Star Tsar
Summary: A series of one shots about Ash and Lance's time together in high school.
1. Chapter 1

I'm mainly writing these to get a better perspective on Ash and my idea of her, so as to better characterize her in my main stories, and also to keep you all entertained while I work on my bigger stuff. Most, if not all, of these will be written from Ash's point of view.

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Lancaster High School

Los Angeles County, CA

Miss Tavares's Sophomore English Class

"Ashley Heilig?" called Miss Tavares, a saucy young cockatiel recently hired on as an English teacher, going down the roll and nearly finished. Ash raised her hand, bored.

"Here!" she said, and the sound of Tavares tapping on her keyboard followed; then the teacher continued calling names. Ash sighed and propped her head up with one hand, pulling out her phone and earbuds with the other. The beginning of the second nine weeks, while marginally exciting, had quickly degenerated into the dull monotony Ash felt, not only in school, but in most aspects of her life. You'd think that, living so close to LA, she'd lead a more interesting (worthwhile) life, but her parents made sure to wring any sort of fascination or mental stimulation out of their daughter's life. It was becoming increasingly difficult for Ash to put up with it, even when she hid in her music.

Music made her feel like a different person, a more intriguing person; but more than that, it gave her hope that there was someplace she belonged.

Ash had been asking her parents for a guitar for awhile now, but they'd just been giving the old spiel of 'If you keep your grades up for _however long_ ' in return, and she knew that it'd eventually just fizzle out into nothing. She hadn't saved up any money to buy one for herself, and _mom and dad_ wouldn't even let her get a job. 'Getting good grades' was her job. Sometimes she thought about failing just to get back at them, but ultimately knew it wouldn't be worth the trouble just to spite them.

It could be said that school was easy for Ash, but that wouldn't be the truth of it. School _work_ was easy for Ash, _tests_ were easy for Ash, but school itself was very difficult. Nobody was ever really mean to her, and other girls only had compliments for her, but it was hard for Ash to really connect with anyone. There were people she'd talk to in class, or at lunch, but she didn't have any actual friends–no one to whom she could speak candidly. Since she was a porcupine (and on account of a quill-related medical condition) she was always put in the back row of her classes, with the reprobates and class clowns, and they weren't the sort she could easily socialize with, so that just made it more trying.

Ash put in her earbuds while Ms. Tavares continued roll call, now on the last few names (according to seating arrangement). She scrolled through any number of the metal albums she normally listened to, though recently she'd been getting into punk rock. She popped on a playlist mainly comprised of The Ramones, Dead Kennedys, Velvet Underground, New York Dolls etc. The usual fare for someone just getting into punk. It crossed her mind that school wasn't _so_ bad–all the teachers were pretty cool about students using phones and listening to music, and the work was all easy enough. And, of course, in this particular class she got to sit next to-

"Lance L'Estrange?" called Tavares.

"Yo!" shouted Lance, affecting a farcical tone, and most of the class gave little chuckles or snickers. Lance didn't even look up from his phone. Ash smiled at him, dreamily, glancing over. She'd seen Lance in the hall, and even had a few classes with him for a few years now, ever since he transferred over from some Catholic middle school–but she hadn't started to really _appreciate_ him until their freshman year of high school at Lancaster. While he might've been a little rough around the edges, and from the bad part of town, Ash had decided that he wasn't like the other boys. She could tell from those enthralling green eyes of his what a nice, caring boy he must've been on the inside.

Miss Tavares flicked on the projector and toggled the lights off, which usually signalled the class was about to take notes. Ash pulled out her earbuds, a little surprised they'd be taking notes so late in the week, and grabbed a sheet of paper that had been passed back. While most of the students in the back of the oversized class just relaxed or turned to talk to their friends, Ash pulled out her composition book and a pencil. She looked over, just for a moment, to see Lance reclining in his desk and staring at his phone with his usual blank expression, obviously without intent to do any work. Normally Ash looked down on that kind of thing, but she made an exception for Lance. While he had a reputation for being one of the laziest students in the school, he also had a reputation for being deceptively intelligent–known for letting people cheat off his tests, and always answering every question correctly. Accordingly, Ash had already made up her mind that Lance was sweet, smart and sensitive; but from the wrong side of the tracks, and correspondingly brooding and damaged.

For all she had thought about him, the two had barely ever spoken. The first memorable time Lance even referred to her was when he gave her the nickname 'Sieg' Heilig (which unfortunately stuck) the first time he heard Ash's name get called. The only other 'conversation' of note was at the start of Ms. Tavares's class a week and a half earlier when he said, "I like your jacket," in reference to Ash's denim battle jacket, adorned with several heavy metal patches, and she embarrassedly replied, "Thanks," and nothing else.

While Ms. Tavares squalled about Shakespeare in the background and switched slides, it all seemed to melt away for Ash (who didn't realize she was staring at Lance). Then, like he could sense her gazing at him, Lance turned his head and met her soft blue eyes with his own. Realizing what she'd been doing, he smiled–flashing his dopey buck teeth. Ash's heart started to pound and she looked away, trying to suppress a smile of her own.


	2. Ash gets Lance a pepsi

Ash gets Lance a pepsi

"Hey, Mom!" Lance shouted, and his summons echoed out of his bedroom and bounced off the beaten, punctured drywall of the house's halls. There was no answer. He was sat up on his bed, leaning against the wall flush with it, and tuning his guitar while Ash did the same. "Mama!" he called again, still with no answer. Ash looked concerned. "Get me a pepsi!" Lance leaned forward, silencing the vibrating strings of his unplugged axe and listening for the tell-tale footsteps of his mother walking to the kitchen. He heard none, and started to get irritated. "Oh, je-... What the fuck now," he mumbled angrily and made the motion to jump down from his bed before Ash stopped him.

"I-I'll get you your Pepsi, baby," Ash raised a hand to him and stood up, laying her stratocaster on Lance's bed.

"Alright, babe. Thanks," Lance leaned back slowly, a little surprised. Ash had been acting like this for about half a month now, skittish and overly attentive to him, and Lance still couldn't ascertain why.

Ash walked out of the bedroom and started toward the kitchen, which wasn't a far distance in the little house. She stepped lightly passed the door to Lance's mother's bedroom, the door just slightly ajar enough for Ash to peek through and see the older woman laying in the same catatonic depression she had been in ever since Lance's stepfather, Curt, died of lung cancer a couple weeks earlier. She'd always seemed to like her son's girlfriend, but the two had never really gotten close, and Ash was starting to regret that.

Lance's own reaction to the death was much more bewildering, however, and in many ways sadder. Ash had been with her boyfriend for over two years, and she felt that he had very much become her second half; so she could usually tell what was going on in Lance's head, and could read his muted facial expressions and stunted body language with some degree of expertise. This is why it shocked her when Lance, who Ash knew to be a very sensitive and emotional individual, acted as if his step-father's death had never even occurred, shrugging his shoulders casually when asked how it made him feel. His mother's crippling despondency didn't even seem to affect him, beyond the irritation he felt at her no longer waiting on him hand and foot.

From what Ash could gather, Lance had managed to convince himself that his mother's state was the result, not of her husband's death, but of some perpetual hangover; and believed her to be an alcoholic (even though his mother had given up drinking entirely years earlier).

Ash walked into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator, woefully devoid of food save a few pepsi cans and couple scraps of leftovers Ash had been bringing from her own family's dinners. Curt was the only source of income for the already impoverished household, and unpaid bills were strewn across the kitchen counters. It would only be a few more weeks until someone noticed the rent wasn't getting paid. Ash grabbed a can of pepsi and closed the fridge.

Walking back to Lance's room, Ash reflected on her own deteriorating home life. She was graduating nearly half a year early and would be finished with high school in just a little over a month, but not even that garnered Ash her parents' approval. Nothing seemed to please them and, after years of fighting with them over her boyfriend (and any number of other conflicts), they acted as if they'd finally given up on their daughter. The only person in her family Ash still spoke to was her little sister, Izzy, who had just started middle school.

Her tense relationship with her parents was always a problem for Ash, though. Her greatest issue was grappling with the ever present melancholy that had been afflicting her in the months leading up to the end of high school. It all felt as if she were driving on a never-ending road to nowhere, but at the same time coming up on a dead-end stop. Ash had no idea what she was going to do after high school, and always thought that she'd be afraid of the unknown–but she found herself more afraid that there was no unknown. The worst part of this vague, nebulous gloom was that Ash couldn't pin any of it down with words–that she couldn't understand what was making her sad during what should've been the happiest time of her life.

This, combined with such disturbing episodes as bringing Lance some leftovers and walking into his house only to see him standing in his mother's bedroom doorway, screaming at her to ' _get the fuck up and stop being so dramatic'_ while she lay there face-down, motionless, only compounded Ash's feelings of despair. Many times, she thought about trying to talk about her feelings to her boyfriend (something that always made her feel better), but it made Ash feel guilty to even think about her own relatively small problems compared to Lance's.

The only way Ash coped with these feelings was daydreaming and fantasizing about just running away with Lance, escaping from all their troubles together. He had stopped going to school, claiming to be disillusioned with the state of modern education (but really just lazy and failing), so it wouldn't have been like school would've gotten in the way of Ash's little fantasy.

While they'd been together for years, Lance had only recently started showing Ash all the technically complex and experimental music he'd written over the years (probably while he should've been doing schoolwork) and it amazed her. She'd always known her boyfriend was smart, but when Ash saw those sheets of music she knew that Lance was a genius. He had real, tangible talent; and in this revelation lied the pretext for Ash's plan, to get away and go somewhere. She and Lance would pack up all their guitars and amps and pedals, and make good on their escape to The City of Angels–so close, but unobtainable for so many years–and then they'd make the big time. Ash knew they would.

But, so far away from all those dreams, Ash stood in the hallway of a sad little house–in front of the scratched and banged up door to Lance's ugly little bedroom. She opened it, just as Lance plugged his guitar into the Vox amp.

"Hey, Babe! Check this out!" said Lance enthusiastically, brandishing a rudimentary guitar slide he had made out of an aluminum pepsi can he'd sliced up. He put the thing on his middle finger and ran it along the strings of his strat while he played a simple pentatonic scale in C major. Once the wobbling, screeching solo ended he looked up at his girlfriend, smiling.

"Yeah, that's really cool, baby," said Ash, smiling back weakly. She handed him his pepsi, which he promptly opened and sipped, then she picked her own guitar back up and sat on Lance's bed next to him. Lance set his soda down on the night stand, and Ash wrapped her arms around him, kissing him deeply. "I love you, Lance," she said, then buried her face in his neck.

Lance hugged his girlfriend in turn, confused. "I love you too, Ash."


End file.
